The currently dominant monetary system is prone to crashes, which causes economical problems and social marginalization, especially among the low-income population. Smartly designed community currencies could help stabilize the fragile economy by diversifying monetary ecosystem, as well as bring alternative ways for people to accumulate wealth and provide value to their communities. This thesis compares blockchain-based technologies that could be used as the basis of a community currency. Technologies are evaluated from a point of view of a potential community currency experiment conducted by the City of Helsinki.
The thesis finds that using blockchains in the scope of the City of Helsinki’s project is not optimal, as the technology is still rather immature and using the popular platforms poses drastic performance trade-offs.